Trump’s Oregon Campaign Manager Set to Address Nativist Extremist Group This Weekend

August 08, 2016

Stephen Piggott

Donald Trump’s Oregon campaign manager, Jacob Daniels, is scheduled this weekend to address a meeting of Oregonians for Immigration Reform (OFIR), a nativist extremist organization based in Salem.

OFIR is a state contact group for the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), a hate group that has spent almost four decades demonizing immigrants. Daniels will be speaking to OFIR members about Trump’s immigration policy, which was written with the help of nativist lawyer Kris Kobach, chief counsel for FAIR’s legal arm, the Immigration Reform Law Institute (IRLI).

OFIR is an extremely active anti-immigrant group, with some political successes in the state already. In 2014, OFIR was successful in getting enough signatures for a ballot measure to repeal the state’s decision to grant drivers licenses to undocumented immigrants, which Oregon voters backed. But recent efforts by the group to qualify other anti-immigrant ballot initiatives for this November’s election have not been successful.

Sharing the stage in Salem with Daniels on Aug. 13 will be Paul Nachman, a Montana-based extremist who regularly writes for VDARE, an overtly racist blog focusing mainly on immigration issues. In recent posts for VDARE, Nachman questioned the existence of “moderate Muslims,” called refugees “good liars” and repeatedly cited and praised the late white nationalist writer Lawrence Auster.

OFIR’s vice president Richard LaMountain has also contributed to VDARE, as well as the nativist publication Middle American News. In 2007, LaMountain went a step further, writing a letter to the anti-Semitic publication American Free Press (AFP). The letter, published in AFP’s May 2007 issue, decried the settling of Iraqi refugees to the United States, warning they “will resist assimilation to American society” before claiming some “may even be inclined toward anti-American armed attacks.”

In 2014, Cynthia Kendoll, OFIR’s president presented at the annual “Writers Workshop” organized by The Social Contract Press, a Michigan-based publishing house that routinely puts out race-baiting articles penned by well-known white nationalists. The press is a program of U.S. Inc., the foundation created by John Tanton, the racist founder and principal ideologue of the modern nativist movement and TSCP’s publisher.

The Trump campaign is littered with instances of the candidate using nativist rhetoric, working with anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant activists/groups and citing their materials. Trump’s Oregon campaign manager addressing OFIR’s event this weekend is another example of this troubling trend.